• 1650-1800
• Man no longer dependent on external authority.  
• Rational being capable of his own decision making.
• Changed from "creature" - made by God into a "Being"- separate from God

Emergence of man from his self imposed infancy.  Infancy is the inability to use one's reason without the guidance of another.  It is self imposed when it depends on a deficiencty, not of reason, but of the resolve of courage to use it without external guidance.  Thus the watchword of the Enlightenment is "Sapere Aude". Have the courage to use one's reason. ~ Emmanuel Kant

• Individualism - Man is a rational being free to make his own decisions.
• Dignity - New and vital perception of the dignity (value) of man as a rational being apart from theological determination
• Worth - Human needs, interest, and welfare comes first
• Freedom - Democracy, voting, inclusion
• Question Everything - religion, government, tradition

• Romantic Hero - Promethean Hero
• Creative singularity to the individual
• Chalenge authority
• Heroic personality, especially for causes of liberty and equality.
• Uniqueness of individual trumps the authority of tradition, history, and common practice.

All is God - God is all

Nature is identical to Divinity

• 1750-1840
• Coal - New energy supply, cheap
• Steam Engine - powered by coal, led to:
• Automated Machinery - Cotton Gin - Weaving Machines - Iron Making - Seed Drill - Iron Plow - Threshing Machine - Led to:
• Automated-Mass produced: Clothing, and Food - Led to:
• Factories - Led to:
• Railroads - Travel allowed for people to move to cities

• American group of New England intellectuals who believed the direct experience of nature united one with God.
• Individual is key
• Self Reliance
• Pantheism - Holistic philosophy that all aspects of the universe are infused with a divine spirit.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson - Essay Nature
• Henry David Thoreau - Walden
• Walt Whitman - Song of Myself

• European group of intellectuals, writers, poets, and painters:
• William Wadsworth, John Keates, Percy Shelley, J.M.W. Turner, John Constable
• Pantheism - God and nature are one - All is God, God is all 
• Idealization of nature - a longing to return to uncorrupted life in nature, free from synthetic environment
• Uniqueness is the goal of romantics
• Preoccupied with the "Sublime" - characterized by nobel, majestic feelings of high spiritual, moral, intellectual worth, inspiring awe.
• Exaltation of primitive and common man

• American Transcendentalist 1817-1862
• Abandoned urban society to live in the Massachusetts woods near Walden Pond for 26 months
• Walden - also known as Life in the Woods - "a handbook for living"

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

• American Transcendentalist 1803-1882
• Wanted to "see into the life of Things" and to taste its cleansing power
• Nature - Essay
• Studied Asian philosophy - Bagavad-Gita
• Brahma - short poem

• Stole fire from Zeus to give to man.
• Fire inspired creativity in man.
• Zeus punished him by chaining him to a rock.  Every night an eagle would come eat his liver, and every day it would regenerate.

• Thomas Jefferson - wants the king to prohibit the importation of slaves from Africa, and wants him to pass legislation to end slavery.
• George Washington -  Legislation needs to be put in place to emancipate the blacks and give them a foundation of support for the future "free" generation
• John Jay - Believes the blacks should not be excluded from the rights given to white men in the Declaration of Independence.

• Movement to end human slavery
• 1776 Delaware and 1778 Virginia prohibited importation of African slaves.
• 1777 - Vermont abolished slavery
• 1778 - Rhode Island 
• 1780 - Pennsylvania
• 1789 - Maryland started Abolition Movement 
• 1865 - December 18th the 13th Amendment to the Constitution ended slavery in th U.S.

Perceived the natural landscape as symbolic of the onesness of man and nature.  It was a place of solitary joy and private meditation.  

The landscape and changing seasons are metaphors for human moods and feelings.

Often used only a few words and subtle analogies.